About
Opportunity Peterborough
Connecting Peterborough residents with local employment, training and skills opportunities
Local Impact
Real Local Benefits
When new developments come to a borough, they bring real opportunities for local people - jobs, apprenticeships, training and community engagement.
The Pearl Yard development in Bermondsey includes significant employment and skills commitments, with the developer and contractors providing jobs, apprenticeships, training and community engagement for Southwark residents.
Local people get first sight of opportunities, with on-the-ground support to help them apply.
Purpose
Our Mission
We believe local development should mean local jobs. Opportunity Platform exists because in boroughs like Southwark, where unemployment sits at 6.2 percent and climbing (Trust for London, April 2026), the jobs and apprenticeships created by new developments should land with the people whose streets are changing, not travel to outsiders with better networks.
We work borough by borough, pairing every listing with resident-facing support from local partners so Peterborough residents are first in line where they live.
How It Works
The Delivery Model
A replicable partnership model connecting developers, councils, and communities
Strategy
Storey Consulting designs the local employment and skills strategy for each development
Platform
Opportunity Platform lists local opportunities and connects them with the right candidates
Delivery
Local delivery partners provide resident-facing support: pre-employment training, mentoring, and welfare advice
Outcomes
Real impact for residents - jobs started, apprenticeships placed, training completed
Delivery Partner
Big Local Works
Big Local Works is a Bermondsey-based charity (No: 1182561) and the on-the-ground delivery partner for the Opportunity Platform. Founded in 2017 as a legacy of the Big Local South Bermondsey Partnership, they provide the resident-facing support that turns platform listings into real outcomes.
- Free 1-to-1 job search support and mentoring (16+)
- Pre-employment courses run in partnership with Pearl Yard, delivered by Greystar
- Future Forward programme: youth employment for NEET 16-30 year-olds
- Enterprise support and market stall placements with Southwark Council
- Welfare and benefits advice including tribunal representation
4 Market Place, Bermondsey, London SE16 3UQ • biglocalworks.org.uk
Pearl Yard Results
Impact to Date
107
Residents employed
27
Apprenticeships placed
19
Short courses delivered
397
Construction jobs (199 min)
98
New apprenticeships
158
End-use jobs committed
Why local people come first
What Section 106 actually means
When a council grants planning permission for a big development, it can attach conditions to it. That agreement is called a Section 106, after the part of the planning law it comes from. Some of those conditions are about buildings: affordable homes, a new park, money towards a school. Some are about people.
The ones about people are the reason this site exists. They commit the developer and its contractors to hiring locally, creating a set number of apprenticeships, offering work experience, and going into local schools. Those are promises made on your behalf, in public, before a single brick was laid.
Promises like that have historically been easy to make and hard to check. Our job is to make them real: every job, apprenticeship and training place published where local people can actually find it, and every outcome recorded so the council, the developer and you can see whether the commitment was kept.
Commitments
Key Local Commitments
- Minimum 50 local employment opportunities during the construction phase
- 15 apprenticeship placements across a range of trades
- Pre-employment training programmes for Southwark residents
- School engagement activities with local secondary schools
- Work placement opportunities for residents furthest from the job market
- End-use employment opportunities prioritised for local residents
- Regular community engagement events throughout the development
- Supply chain opportunities for local small businesses
Our Community
Get Involved
Whether you are a resident, an employer or a training provider - we would love to connect with you.